Labour faces extinction if Boris can retain his hold of the English centre

Keir Starmer’s woke base won’t let him repeat Tony Blair’s trick of shifting Right on cultural issues

Obsessed with Twitter, convinced of their own moral superiority, consumed with a demented, irrational hatred of a Prime Minister they loathe almost as much as Margaret Thatcher, the modern Left no longer understands England, English politics or even themselves. The truth, in many cases, is just too painful to countenance.

If anything, the Labour Party is in an even worse place than the Tories were in the mid-1990s, when senior figures would insist, pathetically, that Britain was a naturally Conservative country, just before they were wiped out for a generation by a radical, transformative government. The difference is that the Tories reinvented themselves thanks to Brexit, an issue which started to undermine Labour early on.

Sir Keir Starmer’s party, by contrast, has nowhere to go: its old and new electorates are allergic to one another, its coalition irretrievably shattered. Its new base of graduates and urbanites is too small to deliver victory, and too ideological to compromise. Labour’s pathologies are just as fatal as those that have destroyed many of its continental sister parties. In France and especially Germany, the Greens have overtaken the socialists as the main Left-wing party: why not one day in Britain, too?

The most important fact in British politics, and the one least palatable to the Left, is that Boris Johnson is a centrist. He is in command of the common ground, his politics similar to that of the median English voter. He has tacked Left-wards on the economy, without really losing any voters, and Right-wards on cultural issues, gaining millions. His policies are often supported by large majorities, and at the very least by pluralities. It is simply not true that he is an extremist, or “hard Right”, or (regrettably, as far as I’m concerned) a free-market, small state libertarian intent on privatisation.

Middle Englanders, like Johnson, are pro-nhs; they hate criminals, are increasingly happy we’ve left the EU, want controlled immigration, don’t like foreign aid and enjoy public spending when it benefits them. Like Johnson, they are a strange mix of ambitious, pro-property individualists and mild social democrats, supportive of (some) higher taxes but also fiscal responsibility and (some) tax cuts. They have largely embraced Martin Luther King anti-racism, but loathe wokeism and its claim that the West and Britain are uniquely evil places. The findings of the Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities, slammed by an apoplectic intelligentsia, are actually mainstream.

Johnson’s Tories aren’t “back to basics” social conservatives, unlike 1980s traditionalist Conservatives who worried about issues such as divorce, just as he isn’t a radical economic liberal either. Labour’s rejection of both these positions helped it to sweep to victory in 1997. What unites Johnson’s coalition is cultural conservatism, a much broader and more resilient category which encompasses up to two-thirds of voters. Blair’s “tough on crime” Labour passed for culturally conservative and even Eurosceptic; Starmer’s party is at war with the very idea, which is anathema to its new urban base.

The critical problem for Labour is that on, issue after issue, the Tories are the mainstream. Hard-left positions sometimes have as little as 10 per cent support, and usually no more than 30-35 per cent. Tearing down statues is extremely popular on Twitter but not in the rest of England – outside London and city centres, at least. The result is that there are dozens of seats Labour could still lose, especially now that the centre-right is unified, and only a small number it can easily win. The ongoing realignment still has a long way to go.

Labour can’t fight back on economics: the Tories already (foolishly) believe in spending their way to victory. The obvious solution would be to shift Right-wards on culture. Yet Starmer cannot: his members and younger, graduate voters would not countenance it. They would peel away to the likes of the Greens if he suddenly endorsed a war on crime, or rejected wokery. A post-starmer leader will either shift Left, losing yet more ground, or Right-wards, probably triggering a split. The outcome will be catastrophic either way.

Even worse, the Tories are putting in place policies to halt Labour’s advance in the South. The share of households renting privately fell for the third consecutive year in 2020, to 18.7 per cent, from 19.3 per cent in 2019 and 20.3 per cent in 2017, according to Nationwide. The rise of renting had been one of the drivers of Left-wing radicalisation, especially in London. There are also signs that, like in America, ethnic minority voters are being put off by wokery: the impact for Johnson of being able to woo even 10 per cent more non-white voters would be substantial. The embrace of Hong Kongers will help.

So what could go wrong for the Tories?

The first pitfall would be ideological loss of nerve. Will the Tories move back to the Cameroon Left on culture? If so, a new culturally Right-wing party would emerge, crippling them. The second is self-sabotage: will Johnson blow himself up? The third is the economy. Free markets work; Johnson’s social democracy won’t. There will be no breakaway pro-capitalist party, but trend growth will be feeble, making it harder to level up. The deficit has been plugged by printing money. A fiscal reckoning could destroy Johnson, as would a global recession caused by the popping of the international central banking bubble.

The fourth challenge is the green agenda. The public is pro-environment, but doesn’t want its wallets or quality of life to suffer. The signs here are most worrying: the parallel is the early unease at immigration during New Labour’s heyday.

The rising proportion of graduate voters is another major problem for the Tories. The answer is not to bail out Labour-voting graduates by reducing fees. Instead, it is to reform the universities, make them more intellectually diverse, rein in their over-expansion and incentivise them to find higher-paying jobs for graduates. More children should go into vocational training. Those that do go to university should be encouraged to focus on scientific subjects.

For now, the real question isn’t why the Tories are doing so well – it is why aren’t they doing even better, given the realignment of the British electorate? Hartlepool will provide an early answer.